14 Old-School Ground Beef Dishes No One Seems To Make Anymore

Few proteins are as dependable as ground beef. It's one of those ingredients where a little goes a long way. Plus, it's incredibly versatile. For decades, people have been coming up with creative ways to add more flavor to ground beef and unique ways to use it in a variety of dishes. Some of these dishes are still around, but others seem to have fallen into obscurity. For example, when's the last time you saw a sloppy joe on the table? Or a cabbage roll? What about beef goulash or even just Hamburger Helper?

There's no denying that tastes have changed. A lot of once-popular ground beef dishes feel heavier now, or maybe just a little too old-fashioned. Some folks are eating less meat, or going for fresh and flashy over baked and bubbly. But there's still something satisfying about many ground beef recipes. Not only are they nostalgic, but they're also great for busy nights, wallet-friendly meals, and big appetites. They might not show up on menus or TikTok feeds, but these old-school ground beef dishes are classics for a reason, and we think some of them deserve a comeback.

Cocktail meatballs used to be all the rage at potlucks and dinner parties. They were often slathered in a sticky, sweet-and-sour sauce and served with toothpicks for easy pick-up and eating. You'd often see them served alongside other finger foods like deviled eggs and party ryes. They're part of a whole era of vintage appetizers from the '70s that have mostly disappeared, which is too bad because they're super easy to make and pretty darn flavorful.

If you're looking to add some retro vibes to your next gathering, consider making grape jelly meatballs. All you need to do is season some ground beef, roll it into mini meatballs, and simmer the meatballs in a sauce made with equal parts grape jelly and ketchup or chili sauce. Some people like serving the meatballs in a chafing dish to keep them warm. 

For an old-school meatball main, Hawaiian meatballs are packed with flavor. The dish typically consists of meatballs, pineapple chunks, and bell pepper cubes tossed in a tangy sauce made with soy sauce, cornstarch, vinegar, and brown sugar.

If you grew up eating TV dinners and school lunch trays, there's a good chance you've had Salisbury steak. At first glance, it might look like a bun-less burger swimming in gravy, but there's a lot more to this retro dish than that. A classic Salisbury steak features ground beef mixed with flavorful ingredients like grated onion, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and Dijon mustard. The mixture is formed into patties and browned in a pan or on the grill. Then, the patties are doused with a rich gravy laced with onions and mushrooms.

You might think that Salisbury steak originated in Salisbury, England, but it's actually an American invention. It was created by Dr. James Henry Salisbury, a physician who was obsessed with the idea of food as medicine. During the Civil War, he tested many of his theories on soldiers and concluded that a diet of mostly meat was ideal. In 1888, he released a book that touted the Salisbury steak as the one and only health food. Dr. Salisbury wouldn't have approved of sides like mashed potatoes and veggies but, for most people, the meal wouldn't be complete without them.

Cheeseburger pie is exactly what it sounds like — a pie featuring many of the same elements you get in a classic cheeseburger like ground beef, cheese, and some sort of bread. Drizzle it with a bit of ketchup and you have a fork-and-knife meal that seems slightly more elevated than a take-out burger. It's not exactly clear when this dish originated, but we do know that various recipes have been floating around since the 1970s.

There are a few different ways you can make cheeseburger pie, but most of them involve sautéing ground beef with savory elements like diced onions and Worcestershire sauce. If you're feeling fancy, you can include add-ins like diced green peppers, dried herbs, and canned tomato sauce. Then, you pile the mixture into a pie crust, top it with cheese, and pop it in the oven until the cheese is bubbly and browned. If you're looking for a fluffier version, you can skip the pie crust and pour pancake batter in with the beef mixture instead. The batter will bind everything together and get nice and crispy on the outside.

Cabbage rolls are a hearty, Old World comfort food that date back thousands of years. They go by many names, including golabki in Poland, holubtsi in the Ukraine, and kaalikaaryle in Finland. In some places in the United States, cabbage rolls are also called "pigs in a blanket,"  which makes sense considering many versions feature pork, along with ground beef, that's wrapped or "blanketed" in cabbage leaves. There are actually several ways to make cabbage rolls depending on which part of the world you're looking to for inspiration.

In the U.S., the most familiar version of cabbage rolls tends to include a mix of ground beef and pork blended with rice, spices, and sometimes onion, all wrapped in blanched cabbage leaves and baked in a tangy tomato sauce. Some recipes call for a splash of vinegar or a spoonful of brown sugar to balance the acidity, while others add bacon for extra richness or sauerkraut for a bit of tang. Cabbage rolls are often served with a dollop of sour cream on top. 

There was a time when no school lunch menu or weeknight dinner rotation was complete without sloppy joes. The sweet-and-savory ground beef sandwich was cheap, filling, and almost always served on a squishy hamburger bun. Curious to know where the sandwich came from? Well, the origins are a bit murky. Stories abound about it being created in Ohio, Florida, and even Havana, Cuba. However, the most compelling story is that a cook named Joe created it by adding tomato sauce to a loose meat sandwich (aka a Maid-Rite sandwich) at a cafe in Sioux City, Iowa, around 1930.

The lazy way to make a sloppy joe is to grab a can of Manwich sloppy joe sauce, mix that with some cooked ground beef, and slap it on a hamburger bun. But, if you want to put a bit more love into your sloppy joe, it's pretty easy to make the sauce at home. Many recipes call for ketchup, brown sugar, mustard, and maybe a bit of garlic powder. You can also throw in some diced onions and bell peppers with your ground beef to give it more flavor and heft. Another genius hack is to use hot dog buns for drip-free sloppy joes.

Stuffed pepper dishes can be found all over the world, from chile rellenos in Mexico to töltött paprika in Hungary and peperoni ripieni in Italy. Many of them feature the same basic formula: some form of large pepper stuffed with meat, sometimes rice, and cheese. The preparation may vary, with different ingredients for the fillings and perhaps the addition of a sauce, but what most stuffed pepper dishes have in common is that they're colorful, vitamin-rich, and filling.

In the classic American version, bell peppers are typically hollowed out and filled with a mixture of ground beef, rice, tomato sauce, and seasonings like garlic, onion, and oregano. The stuffed peppers are then sprinkled with shredded cheese and baked until the meat is cooked through and the peppers have softened. Some versions swap out the beef for ground turkey or include spicy sausage, while others go meatless altogether. You can also replace the rice with quinoa or couscous. The beauty of this dish is that you can put your own spin on it. Go Italian with marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese, or Tex-Mex with taco seasoning and shredded cheddar.

Is there anything more comforting than a meaty, cheesy casserole straight out of the oven? A ground beef casserole is the ultimate "set it and forget it" dinner. With just some ground beef, a starch, a can of soup or sauce, and some cheese, you have a cozy meal that can stretch a few days and feed a hungry group on the cheap. Sure, the dish is somewhat old-fashioned and might remind you of concoctions your grandma used to put together, but there's a reason she kept making them — because they work.

Ground beef casserole is another dish that gives you a lot of leeway to play around with different flavors. You could opt for a Hamburger Helper-inspired casserole and use ingredients like beef, tomato sauce, onions, cheese, and noodles. For a Mexican twist, you can create a loaded beef taco casserole with tortilla chips, ground beef, poblano peppers, diced tomatoes, chiles, and beans topped with cheese. Prefer something creamy? Consider adding a can of cream of mushroom soup or sour cream to your beef and noodle mixture.

Calico beans aren't fancy, but they sure are filling. If you've ever had a scoop alongside a grilled brat or some potato salad, you know exactly the kind of meal we're talking about. It's not clear exactly when the dish was invented, but it was wildly popular at potlucks and church dinners in the Midwest, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s. The dish gets its name from the medley of beans and meats that give it various hues, similar to the coat of a calico cat. It's also sometimes called "cowboy beans."

While family recipes for calico beans vary considerably, the dish typically includes ground beef, canned pork and beans, bacon, onions, and an assortment of canned beans like kidney beans, butter beans, and navy beans. All of that gets simmered in a barbecue-style sauce featuring ingredients like ketchup, brown sugar, cider vinegar, and mustard. Some people amp up the flavor with add-ins like Worcestershire sauce, maple syrup, molasses, or coffee. The beans can be served as a side dish or as a hearty standalone meal.

Back in the heyday of molded salads and aspic-covered everything, jellied meatloaf wasn't all that unusual. It combined two staples of mid-20th-century cuisine: ground beef and gelatin. It basically involved cooking ground beef and mixing it with gelatin and stock. The whole thing was poured into a pan or mold, chilled, and served jiggly and cold. Some versions also included add-ins like chopped pickles, hard-boiled eggs, or pimento-stuffed olives

Interestingly, gelatin dishes once represented wealth and status. Back in medieval times, making gelatin was a lengthy process that involved cooking down animal parts to extract the collagen. At that time, wealthy people would often task their kitchen staff with producing the gelatin and concocting elaborate dishes with it. When Pearle Wait created Jell-O with powdered gelatin in 1897, it made gelatin dishes more accessible to people from all walks of life. Clever marketing made the product a hit, and soon all manner of dishes started taking off, including jellied meat dishes, salads, and desserts. We're pretty sure jellied meatloaf isn't going to make a comeback anytime soon, but we couldn't talk about old-school ground beef dishes without giving it a mention.

Boxed pasta mixes might get a bad rap today, but when Hamburger Helper hit stores nationwide in 1971, it was an instant success. People loved that it was affordable and easy to make with just one pan. All you needed to do was brown your beef, drain off the fat, then add the pasta and seasoning mix from the box along with some water or milk, and you had yourself a tasty dish. Plus, there were five fun flavors to choose from: Beef Noodle, Potato Stroganoff, Hash, Rice Oriental, and Chili Tomato.

Hamburger Helper has undergone some changes over the years. For one, it's just called Helper now. In 2013, General Mills wanted to dissuade people from thinking that the mix was only for hamburger meat, seeing as how there were other flavors meant for chicken and tuna. Today, there are tons of Helper flavors to choose from including Tomato Basil Penne, Bacon Cheeseburger, and Crunchy Taco to name just a few. It might not be haute cuisine, but there's something to be said for an affordable and flavorful meal that you can put together in less than 30 minutes.

The meatloaf sandwich is another retro ground beef dish that often gets maligned for being low-brow. Maybe it's because meatloaf really took off in America during the Great Depression, as it was an easy way to stretch meager resources. In later decades, people began incorporating processed ingredients like ketchup and canned soup, which doesn't help meatloaf's reputation in today's whole-food-obsessed world. Then there's the fact that a meatloaf sandwich is essentially a way to use up leftovers. But that doesn't mean it can't be tasty and filling.

It goes without saying that a meatloaf sandwich is only as good as the quality of the meatloaf. There are a few secret weapon meatloaf tricks that can make the dish worthy of a next-level sandwich. To start, you need ground beef with about 20% fat to keep the dish from drying out. Bacon can also add moisture. In addition, you can jazz up your meatloaf with fun seasonings like garlic powder, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, and onion soup mix. For the sandwich, consider using thick bread that will hold up to the sauciness of the meatloaf and adding a slice of melty cheese for extra texture and flavor.

Ask for goulash in Budapest and you'll get a thick stew with chunks of meat (usually beef) in a saucy tomato broth that's spiced with paprika. Ask for goulash in the U.S., and you're more likely to end up with a skillet full of ground beef, pasta, and tomato sauce. The dish originally comes from Hungary, where it was created by cowherds as a hearty meal that could be cooked over an open fire. When goulash made its way to America, it morphed to include readily available ingredients like ground beef, dried pasta, and canned tomatoes.

A classic American goulash is a one-pot meal that's low-effort, flavorful, and filling. It typically starts with browning ground beef with onions and garlic. Seasonings can include oregano, paprika, and Worcestershire sauce. Next, the dish gets a dollop of tomato paste, then beef broth and canned tomatoes go into the mix, along with some pasta like elbow macaroni. Everything is simmered until the flavors blend and the pasta is al dente. The final touch is a sprinkling of shredded cheddar cheese.

Hamburger soup might not sound glamorous, but it was a staple in many households for good reason. It's hearty, easy to make, and a great way to stretch a pound of ground beef into a full meal. Back in the day, it might have been made by dumping ground beef in a pot with some frozen veggies, canned tomatoes, and beef stock or water, then just simmering until all the flavors came together. It's a simple dish by design but, with a few small tweaks, you can turn your hamburger soup into something that's a tad more elevated.

To kick hamburger soup up a notch, start by sautéing garlic with the onions and beef or using fire-roasted tomatoes for extra depth. Fresh herbs like thyme or parsley can add brightness, and a splash of Worcestershire sauce or a spoonful of tomato paste can boost the savory flavor. Some people like to toss in barley, rice, or pasta to make it heartier, while others swap in sweet potatoes or kale for a fresher spin. You can also spice it up with a bit of cayenne pepper or chili powder.

If you're one of those people who can't stand pretentious plating, haystacks will be right up your alley. It's more of a format than a specific recipe. Basically, you take a bunch of Tex-Mex-inspired ingredients and pile them on a plate one on top of another until you have a tower that looks like a haystack. Those ingredients could include chips, beans, ground beef, diced vegetables, and cheese. Really, it's all about whatever you have handy. Part of the appeal of haystacks is that they're incredibly adaptable and low maintenance.

Many sources point to a woman named Ella May Hartlein as the creator of haystacks. Legend has it that she and her husband developed a fondness for Mexican food when they lived in Arizona in the 1950s, particularly tostadas. When they moved to Iowa, tostadas were harder to find, so Hartlein created a dish with some of the same elements. The dish took off at potlucks and church gatherings and evolved to include other ingredients like saltine crackers, rice, and chili powder. There are also Hawaiian-inspired versions with ingredients like pineapples, chicken, and crunchy chow mein noodles, as well as dessert haystacks.